The latest in a series of “games that sucked too much to play” posts I’ve been doing since… 2013? No, 2011. This is where I collect all the games I played too briefly to bother reviewing in depth. There were very few of them in 2023, though, because I didn’t focus much on gaming for reasons I’ve already explained.
Brown Dust 2: The only game I seriously tried last year. And not just once, but twice. I downloaded it about two months after it came out, played for two days, couldn’t stand the battle system and dropped it. Then recently I heard they had a PC client and it was their half-anniversary, so I downloaded it again, played for two days again, and dropped it this time for good.
I really thought I would like it because I (used to) like grid-based SRPGs, and I also liked the art style that reminded me of Saga Frontier 2 a bit. But the battle style was too puzzle-like for me, i.e. you have to use specific skills on specific enemies to win. Knock this one back, hit that group with a AOE spell, set up this other move, that kind of thing. I find that kind of gameplay stressful because it means I can’t use my favorite characters to unga-bunga my way through the various stages but have to rely either on my failing wits or a guide. Yeah, not happening.
The second turn-off was playing the Christmas event about some girls in a bar trying to fight against some dictator. I was already turned off by the brutal murder of a character in the event prologue and the extremely bleak mood of the city (obviously we’re going to be trying and failing to defeat this dictator lady for 200 chapters), but it didn’t help that the stage had a stealth component that meant I had to go around dodging lights to make any progress. Get caught and you have to start the stage again. I hate stealth. I hate stealth. I hate stealth. And once more for good measure, I HATE STEALTH!
The third turn-off, which is really just a bonus, was the lack of any interesting characters for me to latch onto. The main character I initially started with is this faceless “hentai protagonist” kind of character that the ladies in his party are nevertheless crazy about… can’t get behind that. Then when I had kind of made my peace with that, I had to switch to another party with more characters I don’t care about. That’s when I dropped the game the first time. Like, you had your chance already.
Brown Dust 2 is a fine-looking game, so if the combat had been to my taste and the event story hadn’t been so depressing, maaaaybe I wouldn’t have dropped it? It’s a big maybe though, because everything else about it didn’t hook me in two attempts and I don’t feel like trying a third time. This experience has also made me a lot less eager to try supposed “strategy RPG” gachas like Archeland and Aster Tartariqus, not that they’re ever going to get licensed anyway.
Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle: I actually played this in 2022 but forgot to mention it in the 2022 edition. I quite liked it, to be honest. I can’t remember what made me install it, or what I was expecting, but I had fun getting stronger and doing bigger and fancier numbers against enemies. Get a load of this power level, Vegeta! Somehow I’d always expected a Dragonball game to have fighting game mechanics, so the colored balls system was like… huh? But it’s always been a wacky franchise, so anything goes.
The main reason I dropped it was that I had installed it on a wonky old phone, so it used to take forever to load, and it crashed very often. I got angry one day and just shut the whole thing down, though I felt a bit sorry afterwards.
The other reason I left was because I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of alternate versions of characters. I doubt I’m exaggerating when I say there were like 50 different Gokus, from child Goku to teen, then adult, then DBZ, DB Super, all in various colors for the different elements. And that’s not even counting the fusions like Gogeta and Vegitto. It made pulling for characters very hard and confusing, though the standard gacha policy of “Get the latest and shiniest version” served me well.
Third reason, which I can easily resolve, is that I haven’t watched most of Dragonball Super, so I didn’t know a lot of the characters, and I didn’t want to be spoiled by what little story Dokkan Battle has. When I have some downtime later this month, I’d like to get back to Super and finally find out who/what characters like Goku Black and Zamasu are. Then maybe I’ll get back into Dokkan Battle, you never know.
Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space: I dropped it long ago, but in my head I always meant to go back. That’s why I carefully stored the ID number I need to recover my account… or I thought I did, but when I redownloaded the game last year and began hunting for the number… oops. Couldn’t find it anywhere. Did I delete it? Upload it somewhere? And what kind of game doesn’t have Google linking in this day and age? There’s no way I’m going to start Another Eden from scratch after all I’ve been through (not to mention I’ve gotta have my Pizzica-chan) so that’s it for me and Another Eden. Aww…
Honorable mentions
Two gacha games I’d previously enjoyed were closed/announced their closure in 2023. Princess Connect! Re:Dive global edition and Dissidia: Final Fantasy – Opera Omnia, may you rest in peace. For Priconne, it’s not so bad firstly because I’m not that big a fan and secondly because the Japanese version is still going strong.
I’m a little sadder about Opera Omnia, because I kept hoping they would pull themselves out of the unfun and unsustainable death spiral that was the Force Era. I’ll miss it a lot, but at the same time I have no desire to play it in its current state, so I understand why it’s going down. Evidently I wasn’t the only one put off by gimmicky bosses with billions of HP requiring specific strategies with specific characters and specific weapons to beat them. I just want to have fun with my favorite FF characters in a gacha game, and I think Dissidia came closest to making that happen. Hopefully Square-Enix will learn a lesson from this and… hahahahaha, I crack me up. Farewell, Dissidia!
